ASIA / Dalai Lama Names New Panchen Lama

Chronicle Wire Services

Published 4:00 am, Monday, May 15, 1995

1995-05-15 04:00:00 PDT New Delhi, India -- A spokesman for the Dalai Lama said yesterday that the Tibetan spiritual leader has declared a 6-year-old boy as the reincarnation of the Panchen Lama, who is second only to the Dalai Lama in authority and prestige.

The Nobel Peace laureate, who leads the Tibetans in exile, named Gedhun Choekyi Nyima -- born to a semi-nomadic family in April 1989 in the Lhari district of Nagchu in Tibet -- as the true reincarnation of the 10th Panchen Lama, and gave him the name Tenzin Gedhun Yeshe Thrinley Phuntsog Pal Sangpo.

Lamas traditionally scour the Tibetan plateau, guided by natural omens or instructions left before the previous lama's death, until they find a boy to whom the spirit of the lama is believed to have migrated.

But four attempts by the Dalai Lama to visit Tibet to search for the reincarnation had been rebuffed or ignored by the Chinese government since 1989, said Jampal Chosang, the Dalai Lama's spokesman.